Tag: it’s a trap

For some students, today is the last day to drop a class without it appearing on your transcript. Still on the fence about whether to drop a class or two? Here’s some tips we’ve compiled from current upperclassmen about when to drop a course.

Your entire grade is the midterm and final. This is a recipe for disaster. We all think we’re going to study a week in advance and be super duper prepared for the exams, but everyone procrastinates. You’ll wait until the night before and all of a sudden realize half your grade’s on the line, and since there was no homework, you actually know nothing – seriously, don’t do this to yourself. Leave while you still can.

You have no friends who are taking the class. This is more of a gray area – you can either decide to make new friends (the horror!) or drop the class. There will come a time, usually around midnight the night before the first homework assignment is due, when you will sorely regret not having anyone to go to. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when – do yourself a favor and see what else is there.

Your professor hasn’t cracked a joke in the first lecture. I’m not saying all professors have to be stand-up comedians all semester, but a professor that isn’t remotely interesting is going to make it very hard to go to lectures. If your professor hasn’t predicted attendance is going to nosedive, or told a joke at his/her expense, it’s only going to go downhill from there. Unless it’s a graduation requirement that you have to take this semester, leave.

Caveat: sometimes professors will try to lure you in with crafty jokes the first lecture, then head straight for Boresville – by this point in the semester, you should know if the class is all it’s cracked up to be.

Your professor interrupts him/herself mid-sentence. Anyone giving off the air of being senile or perhaps not quite all there should definitely be reconsidered. Disorganized lectures are the bane of any college student’s existence, resulting in notes that are half-finished and moving on to a random tangent. If you can’t follow the professor because they’re not speaking in fluid and/or full sentences, you’re pretty much doomed.

Addendum to the above: your professor speaks broken English/has an unintelligible accent. It’s not that we’re trying to be mean. Sometimes it’s genuinely impossible to understand the professor. Pull the ripcord on that one – it’s not going anywhere good.